


these are the ones you dream of

by stupidsecretthings



Category: Bon Appétit Test Kitchen RPF, Chef RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, a little pining because it's me, did you expect anything less, remember the first rule of rpf club you heathens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:51:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21749944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stupidsecretthings/pseuds/stupidsecretthings
Summary: Nobody truly knows how it works, but the strongest theory is simply that each person’s words relates to something significant about your soulmate and/or your relationship with them.
Relationships: Brad Leone/Claire Saffitz
Comments: 22
Kudos: 106





	these are the ones you dream of

**Author's Note:**

> i hereby dedicate this to the discord, the best prompt-creators, and the loveliest people. 
> 
> title from 'these are my friends' by lovelytheband, and also 100,000% the discord for dragging me out of title-induced mania. 
> 
> i hope you enjoy, friends :)

Claire Saffitz is born on September 16th, 1986 in St. Louis, Missouri. 

She’s a tiny baby, little fingertips probing at the air haphazardly, trying to make sense of this new world she’s found herself in, and her parents are hit by a wave of intense, all-encompassing love and devotion for the tiny thing in their arms. She yawns, stretches her arms out in front of her, and this is when her mark is first noticed. 

On Claire Saffitz’s tiny wrist, is a tiny, faded, barely-visible pink mark.

///

For as long as anyone has known, all babies have been born with a mark. It’s unintelligible at first, but as the baby grows, it becomes more and more clear, and by six-eight months, the baby will have perfect, tiny text where their original mark was that tells them _something_ about their soulmate. 

Nobody _truly_ knows how it works, but the strongest theory is simply that each person’s words relates to something significant about your soulmate and/or your relationship with them. 

///

In the polaroid pictures taken on Claire Saffitz’s first birthday on September 16th, 1987, you can see the black mark, with writing too small to be seen on the camera, where the pink mark had been one year before. 

Even as a baby, as evidenced by the pictures, Claire’s always either covering or tracing her soulmate text. 

///

The first time one of her friends meets their soulmate, Claire is eight years old. Her friend Annie has had the word ‘honey’ on her ankle in well-defined text since she was six and a half months old. 

One day, a new boy joins the class. They’re a quarter of the way through the school year and everyone knows each other already, having gone to the same elementary school since they were six. 

When the teacher asks him to introduce himself, he says that he’s called Tom, that his favourite colour is probably red (but he’s not sure), and that his dad has a hive of honeybees in their garden. It all progressed from there. 

Claire ends up being the maid of honour at their wedding when they’re eighteen. 

///

Claire thinks she hates this whole soulmate thing. It’s stupid, surely? And why is she the only one with something ridiculous as their soulmate mark? Why couldn’t she have something like honey?

_Half-sour_? Really? 

Like… the pickle? 

She’s twelve when she starts covering it with makeup so people can’t see. She doesn’t want a soulmate, anyway. She can and will determine her own path in life without any help from the universe, thank you very much. 

When she takes the makeup off at night, she finds herself absentmindedly tracing the letters to relax. She catches herself, stops, tugs her sleeves further to cover it again. 

It _is_ stupid, right?

///

Claire likes Harvard. It’s a challenge, and she’s always relished a challenge. She likes that everyone at Harvard is either too busy or too stressed to care too much about soulmate-identifying text. 

Claire covers it anyway. Six years’ worth of habit more than anything else. 

///

Culinary school is amazing. Paris is gorgeous, and Claire is in love with France. She misses home, sometimes, though, and she knows she could never stay in Paris permanently. 

Claire makes some lifelong friends, watches a few of them get married. At one wedding, the couple's words written in cursive text on the wedding cake that Claire made for them. 

Ma chérie and mon coeur. 

Claire makes sure her words is slathered with makeup before the wedding. And that she’s wearing long sleeves. Just in case. 

Seriously. Why are her words so freaking ridiculous?

///

In Montreal, Claire Saffitz genuinely and seriously considers that she may be losing her mind. 

She _misses_ cooking. 

It’s not a fantastically unexpected development, she has always loved to cook, and definitely had a natural talent for it, but she never thought she’d ache so much without it. Above all else, academia has always been her safe-space, and suddenly, it isn’t anymore. Academia is how she escaped the nagging thoughts she always had, the what-ifs and when’s that floated in question marks around _half-sour_. 

  
Culinary history is interesting, but it’s not how she wants to spend her life. 

She huffs, doubles down on her research, and absently wonders how often she’ll have to cook with half-sour pickles. Strangely enough, she’s had an aversion of them since childhood (specifically since she was twelve and her words mysteriously blended in with the skin on her wrist). 

///

Claire Saffitz meets Brad Leone for the first time on a Thursday. He greeted her with an impossibly warm smile and a delightfully welcoming tour of the test kitchen, and was all boisterous energy and riotous laughter. Claire remembers thinking that Brad was a lot to take in, a lot of fractured focus and splintering conversations but she also couldn’t repress the vague sensation of feeling utterly charmed. 

She remembers her heart squeezing in her chest, the skin of her wrist burning momentarily, but forces herself not to think about it. It doesn’t mean anything. It _can’t_. 

  
Besides, as she finds out two weeks later, he has a girlfriend. Probably his _soulmate_. 

  
She definitely doesn’t let herself think about the sharp pain that shuddered down her spine when she thought about that. (She definitely doesn’t use copious amounts of wine to try and drown out her thoughts). 

///

That feeling like Claire’s going to burn from the inside out, like the fluttering in her stomach could damn well be a volcano, doesn’t stop. Especially not when she begins to grasp the true depth to which Brad cares about others. 

Claire’s distracted. It’s not something that happens often, usually she’s so task-oriented it reaches the point of near-mania, but today her mind’s elsewhere. Every now and then she thinks she sees Brad lingering nearby, his gaze setting her alight from the various hidden corners of the test kitchen. 

  
It’s just… it’s been a rough week. The kind of week where she just needs to go out and get completely fucking wasted with some other poor soulmateless-soul because _fuck_ soulmates, honestly. She’s been dating a guy for nearly a year, and really, genuinely feels something for him (and she knows he felt something for her too, honestly, she does, but it doesn’t hurt any less). His word was ‘rose’ and Claire hoped that one day something would click and make sense. 

And, it did, she supposes. Just not with her. 

She’s currently chopping vegetables and releasing some pent up anger but she’s only getting more and more frustrated until eventually—

“Ow— shit! Motherfucker!” she curses, clutching her hand to her chest as searing pain blossoms through it, the knife she was using clattering to the counter with a sickening tint of red on the blade.Brad’s by her side in an instant, a dish towel at hand and immediately he pulls her hand away from herself, wraps it up, and keeps firm pressure on it. 

“_Christ_, Claire, you gotta be careful,” he murmurs, and distracted by the pain as she is, she’s helpless but to notice the concerned shine to Brad’s blue, _blue_ eyes, the frown tugging at the corners of his lips, the soft way he’d spoken to her and above all, that for someone as scattered in focus as she’s come to know him to be, how singularly focused he is on her right now. 

He presses just a little harder in a bid to stop the bleeding, Chris and Carla are on hand with the first aid kit and she hisses out a, “Fuck.”

“Shit, shit; sorry, Claire, but I gotta stop the bleedin’. Can’t let you die on us, not on my watch, no sir,” he says, his gaze still locked on her hand, occasionally flicking up to her face to gauge how much pain she’s in, and she can’t help the soft smile that plays on her lips at Brad being so _Brad_, even right now when everything seems a little off-kilter. 

The bleeding finally slows enough for Brad to be able to remove the towel, and there’s a collective hiss and grimace at the cut Claire has managed to inflict upon herself. It’s a deep wound (but a clean slice, at least), that will more than likely require stitches, and Claire groans under her breath. 

“Me-ow, Claire,” Brad huffs, and she sees a hint of mischief start to dance in his eyes when he says, “You really don’t half-ass anythin’ do ya?” 

It gets the desired response as Claire laughs, and slaps him with her other hand. “_Brad_,” she whines half-heartedly, smiling up at him and he smiles back, and it’s this warm, soft thing that finds a place at the back of her heart with everything else Brad-related, where she shoved it when she felt her feelings spiralling beyond her control. 

Brad accompanies Claire to the emergency room (“I’m TK manager, Claire, this happened on _my_ watch, you’re _my_ responsibility now.”), and they sit side by side in the uncomfortable waiting room chairs for someone to become available to stitch Claire’s wound.  


“You workin’ on anythin’ super important that’s gon’ require the use of your mangled hand there?” 

“Wh— Brad, don’t say it’s _mangled_. It’s not mangled,” she huffs, fidgeting in her seat and picking at the edge of the gauze Brad had applied to stem the bleeding while they waited, but smiling slightly despite herself. “No, Brad, luckily it’s my right hand which is useless anyway so I should be fine.”

“Tha’s good,” he replies, nudging her knee with his. “I’m around to help if you need it though— you got that, Saffitz?”

She smiles at him, knocks her shoulder into his. “I got it, Brad,” she echoes. Her heart stutters in her chest when Brad gives her that look where his eyes are swimming in an emotion she can’t name and are so, so blue. “Same goes for you.”

He blushes slightly, the tips of his ears flushing red for just a second (but just long enough for her to catch it), and then he’s coughing slightly and fidgeting and when he looks back up at her there’s something so _raw_ in his gaze that she can’t breathe for a second. 

“Claire,” he starts, and his voice is so rough that he has to clear his throat before he continues. “Are you, uh, you okay? You seemed a little off all day, and it’s uh, it’s not like you to be like that. Had me worried for a bit there.”

Claire has to break Brad’s gaze to get any sort of order to her thoughts. “I, um—” she starts, but is cut off by the fracture in her voice. “Just… a shitty week.” She chances a glance back towards Brad and not her lap and sees nothing but an ocean of vulnerable concern for her; she offers him more. “You, um, you remember Ethan?”

“Yeah,” Brad’s voice is gruff and low, “I ‘member ‘im. Why? He hurt you?”

Claire tucks her hair behind her ear nervously, not quite used to be so open, and feeling a little shaken at how natural it feels to be so exposed with _Brad_. “Not purposefully. He found his soulmate,” she shrugs, trying to feign nonchalance (and failing), “wasn’t me.”

Brad murmurs a subdued, “oh, Claire,” and before Claire can register what’s happening she’s already folded into the warm embrace of Brad Leone. She tenses for a second, surprised and unprepared, but almost against her will she melts into it, rests her forehead on Brad’s shoulder, lets her uninjured hand press him closer. 

She decides she’s allowed this moment of vulnerability. 

///

Claire’s Harvard alumnus isn’t mentioned for a long while, not until Claire nails a recipe someone had been struggling on first try and Carla brought it up. “Must be the Harvard in you, Claire. Good job.”

Everyone laughs a little, the chronic overachiever in Claire preening just slightly. Claire gets a few claps on the shoulder from her colleagues, but looks up and notices that Brad has gone eerily quiet. 

He’s stood stock-still, the colour drained from his face just enough that she notices it, and he’s staring at her so intensely that she feels like she could combust under the dense weight of it. Claire has to force her eyes away, focusing on everyone else, and when the group disperses Brad is still there, but has also averted his gaze from hers. 

“Brad?” She asks, touching a hand to his forearm to grasp his attention, finding the gesture foreign. Claire never has to seek out Brad’s attention or _try_ for it, she just somehow always has it and that’s something she never really comprehended until now. His unfocused gaze snaps to her face and she has to bite back a gasp at the look on his face.

She swallows against the sudden nervousness she feels. “You okay? You kinda zoned out there.”

He smiles. But it doesn’t reach his eyes, and her heart pangs in her chest because Brad Leone with a fake smile means something big is going on in his head that he won’t share. It hurts her to see Brad hurting. “Yeah, Saffitz, just thinkin’ about tryin’ fermented oats, any suggestions from that big brain o’ yours?”

It’s Claire’s turn to shoot a fake smile in his direction, and she thinks her heart might be breaking in her chest, hopes that Brad’s okay because it’s Brad, and Brad deserves nothing but unbridled joy. 

“I do, actually. I don’t have it written down but I’ve got a pretty good flavour profile figured out.”

They make the oats: the recipe is perfect, first time. Brad smiles a soft, proud smile at her that still feels taut somehow and Claire tries to stop her heart from aching quite as poignantly as it does. 

///

Brad’s been acting weird lately.

Claire can’t quite put her finger on it, but he’s seemed a little more muted. At least, around her. She can’t help but notice, with a fairly large dose of bitterness, that he’s the same boisterous Brad around everybody else. Those little smiles he reserved just for her have suddenly become a little more strained, a little more sad, and Claire doesn’t quite know what to do with it. 

She’s spent her whole life trying to overachieve, making sure everything works, and suddenly her relationship with Brad feels broken but she _can’t fix it_. 

It’s nothing obvious, either. He’ll still talk to her, joke with her like he does with everyone. He’ll still poke and prod at whatever she’s making and help her improve it if she doesn’t think it’s quite right.

But he doesn’t touch her anymore. Claire hadn’t noticed the distinct lack of personal space between her and Brad until there all too suddenly _was_ personal space between her and Brad. It feels like there’s boundaries between them, a line in the sand that dictates where he stands and where she stands and _God_, it’s only a couple of feet, if that, but it feels like miles.

She doesn’t know how to bridge the ravine that’s opened up between them. Sometimes, she’ll move to nudge her shoulder against his and he won’t be there. 

An odd feeling of emptiness presses against her chest and refuses to let her breathe every time Brad gives her a forced smile from ten feet away. 

///

It’s Alive was a roaring success, because, of course it was. It’s Brad’s personality, his loud joy, his stellar sense of humour with his little flecks of self-deprecation that make up Brad, all somewhat (though not completely, Brad could never truly be done justice) captured on the camera, rigorously, hilariously, fantastically edited, approved, and then uploaded for the world to see. 

  
Claire loves it’s alive, because Brad looks at the camera with a wide, genuine smile and it feels like he’s smiling at _her_ like that again. 

He’s in the middle of shooting another, and Claire can never stop herself from eavesdropping whenever she’s close enough — try as she might to ignore it and focus — so she can’t help the soft smile that tugs up at her lips as she listens. 

“Picture the cucumber vines growing around me… well— not around me— but, uh, you know— in the background. Hawks buzzin’, rabbits hoppin’.”

It takes Claire approximately thirty more seconds to register that he’s making _half-sour_ pickles. She absentmindedly rubs at her words, but catches herself, forces her brain far away from _Brad_ and from _soulmates_ (even thinking those two things in the same sentence is dangerous), and steadfastly focuses on the pie filling she’s working on. 

She does pretty well, too. She’s fairly proud of herself, manages to keep her eye on the prize and keep working, blocking Brad out with a big enough degree of success. 

Brad yanks her back to reality. “Weo— Claire!” he shouts across the test kitchen, “The stuff in peppers, that’s hot, cuh- cah- how’dya say that? C— ck—”

She keeps her eye on her work, trying, trying, _trying_ to block it out because it’s _fine_. “Capsaicin.”

“Thanks, Claire,” he says, and her heart melts because a little bit of that tenderness she used to see lingering in his now-too-guarded eyes has bled into it a little. 

“You’re welcome.”

And she tries, she does. She really does. But she’s helpless when it comes to Brad, always heart before head. “She’s a little — _half-sour_ herself today.”

“Brad! I can hear you,” she replies, and she can barely remember her own name when Brad laughs like that, so genuinely amused, let alone remember the words on her wrist that she’s covered for over a decade. “So, is that my new nickname?”

“Half-s— oh my god, Claire, it’s perfect. Half-sour Claire. Oh my god it’s _perfect_ Claire!”

“Half-sour Saffitz!” 

“Oh, Half-Sour Saffitz. This is how things happen. Organically.”

Meanwhile, at the back of the room, Claire’s head has finally caught up to her heart and she’s struggling to breathe because holy fucking shit. 

_Half-sour_. 

Her index finger trails over her wrist, traces the letters even though she knows they can’t be seen (she quickly checks to make sure they can’t, just in case). 

It’s fine, she reasons. Totally fine. There could be a whole manner of explanations. Just because this is the _first_ time half-sour has really held any significance for her doesn’t mean it’ll be the _only_ time, right? It doesn’t have to become A Thing™. 

It’s fine. Everything will be fine. Brad isn’t her soulmate. He’s _not_. 

Claire finally remembers how to breathe. 

///

It becomes A Thing™. Brad starts calling her half-sour regularly, and every single time her words itch. No other significant meanings for half-sour arise and she has to begrudgingly admit that _maybe_ Brad Leone is her soulmate. 

It’s a painful admission, if only because she doesn’t think that _she_ is _his_ soulmate. He’s given her no indication to suggest that she even could be, if anything, he’s mysteriously pulled even further away from her. Besides, she thinks, doesn’t he have a girlfriend? A soulmate?

Half-Sour Saffitz gets put on a t-shirt and Brad buys it, wears it to work one day just to get under her skin. Claire calls in sick the next day because she doesn’t think her broken heart can take seeing Brad Leone again so soon without some time to lick its wounds. 

Soulmates _suck_.

///

“Hey, half-sour,” Brad greets as he passes her, leaning down on her station and craning his neck to see what she’s working on while Claire resolutely ignores that sharp pain that stabs through her chest when he calls her that. “Whatcha workin’ on?”

“Pie dough,” she responds absentmindedly, “It’s weird. It’s… it isn’t working and I don’t know why.”

“Ah, not my area of expertise, half-sour, as we know. I’m sure the pastry universe’ll open up for ya soon, Claire, always does.” He winks at her and damn if _that_ doesn’t twist her insides all up in knots. 

Claire’s distracted today. She’s so exhausted, having been plagued by bouts of insomnia and soulmate-induced stress, and she can barely keep her eyes open. She could barely focus when Brad was in the vicinity _before_ he named her after a pickle (she has to admit she kind of brought it on herself: ‘_is that my new nickname?_’ the hell? Clearly she’s a glutton for punishment), how is she supposed to pay attention _now_? 

The answer, apparently, is that she isn’t. She stumbles slightly on her way back from the oven with a hot sheet tray, loses her grip just enough for a consequential burn to blossom on Claire’s hand and wrist. She yelps, drops the sheet tray instinctively and tries to blink back the tears that are very quickly gathering in her eyes. 

“Shit, Christ, Claire— Jesus fuck, c’mere.” Brad’s at her side in an instant, whatever he was doing forgotten in favour of helping her, of soothing her pain. He guides her to the sinks, makes sure the water’s cold and then puts her arm under the steady stream. A hiss leaves Claire at the sudden change in sensation, the nerves in her arm already frayed by the burn, and Brad’s muttering quiet apologies under his breath the whole time, alternating between staring resolutely at the deep red on her arm or into her glassy eyes. 

This is the closest she’s been to Brad in a long time. There are a lot of overwhelming things happening and Claire feels a little bit like she’s suffering emotional whiplash. (She probably, definitely is). 

In the midst of everything going on, the frantic overthinking being conducted by her brain, she _doesn’t realise_. Brad does. He’s staring at her wrist more focused than he’s ever stared at anything in his life, looking away and looking back, assessing (pinching himself to make sure it’s real). 

It takes Claire approximately 94 seconds to grasp why Brad suddenly looks like his world’s been turned upside down. 

There, on her wrist, in black, bold letters is printed ‘_half-sour_’. Brad finally looks her in the eye, his expression curious and his eyes are wet and she must be seeing things because there’s something suspiciously akin to hope fluttering at the corners of his lips. 

“I, uh— it’s not—” she tries.

“What?” Brad interrupts, he’s speaking softly so nobody will overhear, “You have many guys callin’ you half-sour?”

A deep, somewhat existential breath is pulled from her lungs. “Well, _no_, but—”

Brad jerks suddenly, the movement startling her, and he quickly flicks off the water, grabs a towel and gingerly places it on her injured wrist, where the words are etched into her skin. 

He has hold of her other wrist, pulling her behind him, as if he knows her motor functions won’t quite work right that second. 

_Must be a soulmate thing_, her brain traitorously supplies, and she quashes the thought immediately with the little emotional strength she has left. 

“C’mon, Claire,” he prompts. “Let’s get this wrist sorted.” 

And, _oh_, if she weren’t on the verge of a very, very intense emotional breakdown she would have killed him for the double meaning in that. As it is, she has to settle for inwardly grumbling and cringing, her internal organs squeezing just slightly. 

Brad leads her to a supply closet, gestures for her to enter, and she figures that really, he has the high-ground this time, so she follows his direction. The closet is cramped when Brad’s in and the door’s shut, the two of them almost chest to chest. Claire can’t breathe, like, at all. 

Brad shoots her an imploring look, and when she doesn’t offer up the answer he’s looking for, he sighs, gently grabs her wrist and turns the writing on it up to the light. He sounds so soft, so awed, so _in love_ when he speaks. “Your soulmate words,” he murmurs, “It says half-sour.”

“Yeah, but,” Claire has to swallow around the emotion lodged in her throat. “I know that you already—”

“Let me stop you right there, okay, half-sour.” Hearing him call her that really, truly, physically hurts in that moment. “If you’re about to tell me that I have a soulmate already, one that isn’t you… well, I’d say that the Harvard in ya is lettin’ you down, Claire.”

Oh. 

  
Well. 

“What?” Claire blinks, her head moving back as she recoils from what Brad had just said. “But, I thought—”

His laugh is warm and affectionate, and just a little teasing. He swipes his thumb over the words on her wrist (being mindful of her burn). “You thought wrong, Claire.”

Claire’s mouth opens and closes several times, words gathering and lodging at the back of her throat, refusing to move. Brad chuckles very quietly, swipes a few tears Claire hadn’t even realise were spilling down her cheeks away and cups her jaw with the hand that isn’t tenderly holding her arm so she’s forced to meet his blue, _blue_ gaze. 

“It’s you, half-sour, m’kay? You’re it for me. I ain’t the best with words, we both know this,” a watery laugh escapes her at that, “but hell, you can even ask the universe. Claire… we were written in the stars, you-n-me.”

“Brad,” she whispers, her head shaking. “No, we…” And her heart is breaking because why is she fighting this? It’s everything she’s ever wanted but her heart and head will not be reconciled and she just hurts, everywhere. 

Her words are stinging and it’s not because she burned her wrist. 

“Claire,” he mutters, rolling up his sleeve to show a tiny bit of text hidden in the crook of his elbow. 

  
She gasps, gapes at it. What else is she supposed to do?

In tiny text, dwarfed by the width of his arms, is _Harvard_, in bold letters. “If that ain’t you, Claire, this is some weird trick o’ the universe.”

“You never said anything.”

  
“Shit, Claire, I been halfway to in love with you since the second I met ya, how could I not? But you started dating that Ethan guy, seemed alright enough, so I figure you just weren’t into me like that. Then I found out you went to Harvard and I spent the last two years tryna convince myself that it isn’t you.” 

“Did you ever do it?” Her voice sounds wobbly and watery, even to her own ears. 

“Did I ever what?”

“Convince yourself it wasn’t me.” 

“No.”

And then they’re kissing, and she doesn’t know who initiated it but it doesn’t matter because it’s a push-and-pull so addictive she could lose herself here and never want to surface again. She’s folded into Brad’s arms, her body pressed to his, her arms around his neck to pull his lips to hers and his on her hips to tug her closer. 

It’s everything she never imagined kissing Brad to be. 

She always thought his fractured focus would translate into this, too, that his frenetic, vivacious energy would slip into every corner and he’d kiss and suck, quickly and all-at-once in an all-encompassing kiss that left her gasping when it was over. 

But he’s soft, and slow, taking his time, worshipping every part of the kiss. He doesn’t rush and is singularly focused there is no feverish passion but there is passion, it rises steadily towards a crescendo that almost has her knees buckling with the weight of the love and devotion he’s showing her.

“Claire,” he pants when he parts from her lips, keeping his forehead pressed against hers, keeps their hands interlocked, unwilling to let her go. “Please tell me I can stop trying to convince myself it isn’t you. _Please_.” And he sounds so wrecked, so desperate for her in all the ways that matter most that she really has no choice but to press closer still and press her lips to his in a chaste, sweet kiss. 

“Well, what’s a soulmate to do, Leone? Leave you hanging?”

The answering smile he gives her rivals the sun.

///

They’ve been dating for three months when they move in together. It poses logistical challenges at first, but since Brad is the only person she could ever be around 24/7 without her social battery being drained beyond all recognition, they figure it out. 

Claire stops covering her words with makeup. 

Brad proposes to her in Cape Cod, her safe haven, as he knows, with an incomparable sunset playing out around them, gorgeous pinks and oranges licking across the sky. They only have eyes for each other, a splitting grin on Claire’s face and a glinting ring on her finger. They split a jar of half-sour pickles and trace the letters on each other’s arms when they go inside. 

Their wedding is a small, love-focused, elegant affair that leaves Claire breathless and grateful in every way, for _everything_. 

Including, but not limited to, the fact that she was able to prevent Brad from forging ahead with the colour green as a theme for their wedding. 

(“Colour of a pickle, half-sour, _c’mon_, we’ve gotta.”

“_No_, Brad,” she says, but the consternation she tries to force into her voice is negated by the quiet laugh she lets out, and the soft, warm adoration in her dark eyes.  “Just… no.”

Brad folds, unable to deny Claire a damn thing). 

Claire realises that maybe soulmates aren’t so bad after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> note: i feel like it's important that molly's husband's word is 'tuna'. couldnt work it in but definitely feel like it has to be mentioned. 
> 
> please do leave a comment if you feel so inclined, they bring my cold, dead heart back from the ashes. 
> 
> feel free to hmu on tumblr, also:  
https://www.tumblr.com/blog/stupidsecretthings
> 
> <3


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